There ain't no magic in your eyes
by UnluckyAmulet
Summary: Drabble collection. Strange pairings. Peculiar friendships. A lot of characters. And plenty more, eventually. Ratings may change per chapter.
1. Doorways

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Hello there! After a long while of inactivity, I've decided to open up a Harry Potter drabblefic that takes on strange pairings. Just recently I've discovered some peculiar pairings of Harry Potter that I've really enjoyed, so I thought I'd do some experimenting of my own here. This first pairing is Draco x Luna, which is a personal favourite of mine. Depending on what I feel like doing next or if I get any prompts/requests/what have you, I can't guarantee whether the next pairing will be just as odd. (I draw the line at stuff like Dobby x Karkaroff or some such thing. Ew.) I might even stray into canon on occasion.

Enjoy!

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Draco Malfoy frowns at his reflection.

Even his self-absorbed fellow Slytherins have begun to take note of his increasingly skull-like appearance. His eyes glared out from beneath the platinum-blonde strands of his hair, not that he was actually intending to glare. But the bags under his eyes have given his face a certain gaunt intensity that makes people abruptly stop speaking when he enters a room. People are avoiding him these days; his moods are becoming increasingly more erratic as days crawl by. Activities he once was interested in now seem frivolous, childish and a waste of time. Even Quidditch had lost its previous appeal, winning just didn't seem all that important now.

The black and silver cabinet sits before him, its presence giving Draco the same looming and foreboding feeling that he always gets upon close proximity with it. He knows its twin rests in Knockturn Alley, but the ever-present possibility he might _fail_ to fix the wretched thing.

Draco suddenly slams his fist against the side of the counter, enjoying the sound of protest the wood makes as his fist crashes against it. He isn't very good at hitting things - his knuckles sting and throb, but it is one of those rare moments where pain almost feels good.

Almost, anyway.

In the relative quiet of the Room of Requirement, a noise makes Draco look up. He hears the fluttering of wings.

Draco turns.

For a moment, he cannot see her face, just a peculiar silhouette with long hair and its head tilted at an angle as if assessing him and finding him lacking. Draco just stands there for a minute, quietly observing this figure standing above him, particles of dust swirling every which way. No doubt the stranger bathed in sunlight has disturbed some of the older items, climbing atop the endless piles of junk. The cracked, dust-ridden painting she is standing on tilted forwards at that precise moment, however and, disdainful though he was- is- of her, there was no mistaking those enormous, silver-blue eyes. They've always reminded him of a doll's eyes and they look so large, as if they might pop out of their sockets at any moment. Her lips twist into a smile and Draco sniffs, packing as much contempt into it as possible.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

Draco narrows his eyes.

He has no idea how long she might have been there- he cannot remember hearing the door opening or closing. He doubted even if it had he would have noticed, his mind focused on the one solitary task of fixing the vanishing cabinet. His mind has been like this for a while now. Anything that doesn't involved saving his own neck is irritably dismissed. He stays up later and later with boring textbooks, trying to find the right spell to do the job. Draco hardly has the energy to antagonize Potter anymore, even with the "Chosen" rumors floating about the place.

For the first time in Draco's life, he is alone, at the very edge of a breakdown and he just does not know how to handle it.

Luna Lovegood appears to be unfazed by his iciest of glares, though. Draco has long since learnt to switch off his compassion- Luna has long since learnt to shrug off the ill-will of others. Any harsh words he throws at her will bounce straight off. His practiced cool indifference will do nothing to dissuade her if she decides to host a conversation with him. He knows that, and decides that ignoring her entirely is the best course of action.

Rolling his shoulders, Draco turns back towards the vanishing cabinet.

"On second thought, don't bother answering that."

He makes to stride away, but Luna's voice floats to him and he pauses.

"You come here a lot now," she observes. There is no accusation in her voice, or curiosity. She is just stating facts. "But you never take anything out of the room, either, or not that I've seen anyway. So that must mean that you require something else..."

Draco eyes Luna. Evidently, the Lovegood oddball isn't quite as dimwitted as she appears to be.

"_So?_" he retorts, feeling childish, but old habits die hard. "Unless you've got anything useful to say, Lovegood- which I very much doubt- then get out."

"I was in this room a lot last year," Luna answers, and he almost wants to hex her because that slow, dreamy smile of hers just grates uncontrollably on his considerably frayed nerves. "When we had Dumbledore's Army, you know."

Draco flinches at the mention of Dumbledore's name, then mentally curses this moment of weakness. He blames it on his frequent bouts of insomnia he has been experiencing lately, but he knows that Luna saw him. Luna has now moved into a sitting position, her hair spilling down her small shoulders. It catches the light that spills into the room, making it look a more golden-blonde than it really is. He wonders if her mentioning of Dumbledore's Army is actually a thinly veiled threat, and his hand itches to reach for his wand, but her calm expression doesn't even flicker and he decides she isn't going to attack.

"Well?" Draco says, sharply. Luna blinks at him and he stumbles over his words as he hurries to elaborate. "Why are you still here?"

A normal person would get offended at being spoken to like a particularly stupid house-elf, but Luna simply awards Draco with a little chuckle as though she finds his bluster amusing, then turns and points into the distance. It's hard to believe the size of the Room of Requirement- the walls can hardly even be seen with all the assorted objects in the way, but from the inside it could easily rival the Great Hall.

"Oh, my things have been hidden in here again," Luna says, airily. "I've tried a summoning charm, but it seems there is simply too much in here to do it that way."

She tilts her head as she gazes at nothing in particular, although a fanged Frisbee does make a half-hearted growl as it drifts overhead.

"Or maybe I just haven't quite mastered that one yet…"

"Really," Draco snorts, not bothering to conceal the fact he thought that was highly likely.

Luna, still smiling for some unknown reason, lifts her arms into the air like a ballerina and points at the ground with her wand, muttering something Draco cannot quite make out. The next moment, she gleefully leaps from the veritable mountain of left behind items and, just as Draco braces himself for the impact, bounces easily from the floor, landing unsteadily on her feet. She is smiling with all the glee of a child on Halloween.

Draco's confusion swiftly gives away to exasperation. _Ah. A cushioning charm. Of course._

He blinks, surprised. Exasperation is not too far away from irritation, yet there was something almost pleasant about it, like rain after an endless blizzard.

"I'll come back a bit later, I think," Luna says as she passes Draco, and he decides it really is ridiculously long hair as it trails behind her, a golden tendril gently brushing against the skin on his forearm. "Perhaps they've hidden my shoes near Hagrid's again…"

Luna reaches the door, then seems to remember something and glances over her shoulder.

"Oh, you know, you really should go to the hospital wing. Those shadows under your eyes, and your twitching…you have all the symptoms of having an Insidiring Welsh Parasite."

With a nod, as though affirming her confidence in her diagnosis, Luna leaves, taking the swirling dust particles with her.

Draco merely shakes his head and turns back to look at the cabinet again. When he leaves the Room of Requirement much later, he happens to glance out of the window to see a tangle of blonde hair walking back from what looks like the Pumpkin Patch.

That night, he falls asleep straight away, for the first time in weeks.

He isn't sure why.

* * *

If this fic doesn't work out, I guess I can always change the summary and create another Draluna fic. Nice to have a backup plan, I guess. :D

Thank you for reading!


	2. First Names

_Requested by: _Fire The Canon_  
Pairing:_ Padma Patil x Vincent Crabbe  
_Rating:_ K_  
Genre: _Fluff, mostly.

Here it is, my first request from my first reviewer! I hope you like it, I would never have thought of this pairing in a million years. XD Then again, it's hard writing a guy who hardly ever talks.

Enjoy!

* * *

Vincent Crabbe was bored.

He hadn't really expected all that much out of the Yule Ball, but that didn't mean that he still couldn't be disappointed. Draco had been wearing a particularly obnoxious smirk for days after they had all first heard about it, and the Malfoy boy had quite a few girls asking him to go. Pansy had gotten in there first, though, and he had agreed. Crabbe and Goyle had been surprised by that- Malfoy swung between being amused and annoyed by Pansy. When asked about it, though, he had given no more than an enigmatic shrug and that had been the end of it.

Now, though, Crabbe was idling around the not empty tables, trying to scavenge anything alcoholic. (He knew it was highly unlikely, but it gave him something to do.) He wasn't sure where Goyle was, and Pansy had dragged Draco off to the dance floor, probably tired of the blonde sneering at Potter's hilariously awkward first dance.

Crabbe suddenly became aware of the sound of high-heels stomping towards him, and the next moment a girl flopped into a chair at the table he was standing by with a dramatic huff.

He glanced over to see one of the twins- Parker? Pavar? Tugging off her shoes with a disgruntled expression. Her bright turquoise robes looked very nice on her, but her hair looked a bit rumpled and her lipstick was smudged. Her golden bangles caught in the light, throwing glimmers of gold every which was at any dramatic hand-gesture.

Sighing in relief, she leant back after successfully undoing the complicated fasten on her heels to see Crabbe staring at her. He blushed, feeling a little exposed at being caught staring.

"What?" asked the girl, with a little frown.

"Nothin'." Crabbe mumbled.

He'd never particularly noticed her. He didn't pay much attention to anybody who wasn't a Slytherin- Gryffindors and Slytherins had all the usual animosity, Ravenclaws tended to be rather stuck up and Hufflepuff wasn't worth the time. He suddenly recalled that she was either in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw and was just thinking of what the best way to retreat was when she snorted again.

"You're lucky, you know." said the girl- what _was_ her name? - "You didn't have such a useless date. Going it alone would have been much better."

"Who did you come with?" Crabbe asked, despite himself. Perhaps it was just because he was bored, but he liked listening to her talk. She had a tiny bit of an accent and it sounded nice on his ears, particularly after the musical the Weird Sisters were coming out with.

"Ron Weasley," she said, reluctantly. "I kept putting off asking anyone else; by that point it was getting late. It was Parvati's idea since she went with Harry Potter, but he didn't even talk to me, didn't so much as look..."

"So...you're not Parvati?"

Crabbe was getting confused.

"No, I'm _Padma." _Padma snorted, shaking her head. "Parvati's in Gryffindor."

She said it in this You-Stupid-Idiot tone of voice, and Crabbe blushed angrily.

"You _are_ twins." he pointed out, without realizing what a colossally obvious thing this was to say. Padma rolled her eyes.

"Well observed," she replied crisply, standing up.

She suddenly tilted, like without her heels she'd forgotten how to stand properly. Crabbe didn't know what made him do it, but he grabbed her by the elbow, steadying her before she went crashing into to the table. It was hard to say who was more surprised by this. Padma looked at Crabbe, blinking in surprise, and Crabbe took a moment of staring at her eyelashes before quickly letting go.

"Um...yeah." he mumbled. God, this was stupid.

"I don't think I even know your first name," blurted out Padma, as though surprised by this revelation.

"Vincent...Vince." Crabbe said, quickly. He rarely ever got called by his first name. It was funny, both he and Goyle referred to each other by their first names and called Draco by his, but Draco always called them Crabbe and Goyle. Nobody had ever questioned it.

Padma stood there for a moment, her head cocked as though Crabbe was a difficult spell she was trying to work out. He shifted uncomfortably, which made Padma's own nerves settle a little. The Beaubaton boy that Parvati's date had brought over could have given the Giant Squid a run for its money when it came to the amount of hands he seemed to have, wondering anywhere they fancied. Padma had eventually shoved him off and found that she couldn't make up her mind what was worse, being ignored or being handled like a piece of meat.

So with Crabbe standing here and fidgeting awkwardly like he was being told off, it seemed a good deal more pleasant than anything she'd put up with that evening. She hoped her sister was having a better time of it.

Standing up on her tiptoe, Padma tugged Crabbe down a bit by his tie and gave him a quick peck. Nothing special, but he blushed like she'd just snogged him into a stupor.

"Thanks...Vince." Padma said.

Then, giggling slightly to herself, she swept up her high heels and sauntered off, her bare feet soothed by the coolness of the marble floor. They would be aching tomorrow, but at least now she felt like things hadn't been a total waste.

Crabbe, standing there idiotically and with his hand pressed to where Padma kissed him, felt much the same.


End file.
